


Sail your sea, Meet your storm

by calerine



Category: Johnny's WEST
Genre: Gen, Mental Health Issues, One-Sided Attraction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-05
Updated: 2019-02-05
Packaged: 2019-10-22 13:26:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 633
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17663510
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/calerine/pseuds/calerine
Summary: akito comes to terms with his sexuality relatively easily, but that other thing is a little more difficult.starring queer anxious akito





	Sail your sea, Meet your storm

akito comes to terms with his sexuality relatively easily.

he realises it one afternoon when he’s fifteen, watching junta dance backstage before shokura one week. it’s march, and junta’s eyes are red with allergies. but akito’s heart swells all the same, and that warm feeling in his chest that he’s been trying to tamp down for weeks finally bursts through the dam.

balanced on the arm of a sofa, akito hugs his arms tighter around him, gives junta’s back a small, soft smile, gives in to love.

\--

akito comes to terms with this other thing a little less easily.

it’s harder when it’s not love. it’s harder when it makes him harder to love.

he realises it one evening after a dance rehearsal for kanjani, holding his breath the whole train ride home. the ocean in his chest is at high tide and it’s so hard to keep from drowning. the way the younger juniors look at him like he’s someone important, something precious, the way they call him _senpai_. their sickly sweet hope just makes the white seafroth lap at his throat. he wants so so much to make them proud, he wants to make them all proud, wants people to know them all, by name by voice by the gags they all have polished to perfection, that make akito laugh so hard sometimes that he feels like he could drop to his knees and the sea would spill from his mouth.

_are you okay?_ is the first thing junta says on the phone, voice thick with worry.

some days are harder than the others. today had been one of the worst.

akito closes his eyes. his jaw hurts.

_i’m okay,_ he says, then curls his free hand around his other wrist tight enough to stop it from trembling, tight enough that it hurts just a little. he holds his breath in his throat, counts five - four - three - two - one. i’m okay, he says again. then, _i’m gay,_ and that came out of nowhere.

junta sounds like he’s smiling when he replies. _tell me something new,_ he says, and akito forces himself to chuckle, let out a breath that trips on the tips of his crooked front teeth into a barely-there imprint of a laugh. _seriously, are you okay?_

_i’m -- i’m fine._ he’d known junta’d known anyway. junta always knew, but maybe not even junta should know about the depths in akito’s head, that makes it feel like he’s walking through water some days, like he’s drowning in himself.

_okay, okay._ junta sounds muffled, like he’s distracted and akito stares at the ceiling of his bedroom. he bite his lip to keep the tears from spilling. _whatever you want to cry about. i can be here too, you know._

_i’m not --!_ akito tries to sound indignant, but one false step and his voice is giving way. he crumbles onto his bed, curls up on top of the covers and buries his face into his pillow.

_it’s okay, it’s okay, it’s going to be okay._ junta sounds so far away and akito wishes he was right here, making that face he makes whenever akito has too many emotions. _i’m still here, you’re still here._

he cries himself to sleep that night, nightmares pulling at him like undercurrents trying to drag him out to sea. but junta’s there until dawn, snoring quietly over the phone - when the climbing numbers on akito’s screen tells him they’ve been on the line for eight hours and counting.

the morning light blinds him, but akito just stares at junta’s name on the screen, blinking at that picture of his back, his side profile, his hips caught in time backstage all those years ago, and listens to him slowly waking - akito’s lighthouse, his harbour, his anchor in the storm. 

**Author's Note:**

> _Fear is the brightest of signs_  
>  The shape of the boundary you leave behind  
> So sing all your questions to sleep  
> The answers are out there in the drowning deep 
> 
> _Sail your sea, meet your storm_  
>  All I want is to be your harbor  
> The light in me will guide you home  
> All I want is to be your harbor 
> 
> \-- [Harbor, Vienna Teng](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tKDXe0FP2wc)


End file.
